The Secret To Bruce Lee's Speed

WAS BRUCE LEE fast? Thats like asking if The Avengers franchise made any money. Or, if the sun is hot.

- Jason Korol

Anyway, with all the bickering and disagreement in the Jeet Kune Do/Wing Chun world, one thing everyone can agree on was that Lee was exceptionally quick. He was so fast, in fact, that it seems hard to imagine him being so popular without all that speed. But, more to our point, the very system of JKD is built on, and absolutely requires, a fair degree of speed.

I’ve said before that the system is built around the stop-hit, which is to say, counter-attacking, and you can’t do that if you’re too slow. That would be like an ugly model, or a clumsy dancer— or an honest politician! Slow JKD is a flat-out contradiction.

Now, you might think that speed is an essential quality in any fighting art, but that’s actually not true. Speed will help, of course, but it’s far from the dominant attribute of, say, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Jeet Kune Do, on the other hand, rests upon the foundation of quickness and without it, the whole structure comes tumbling down.

But what kind of speed are we talking about here? And how do we train for it?

First, we must have the right technical/ tactical structure of the ready position, footwork, and straight, non-telegraphic strikes—preferably from the forward side. Each of these three technical points integrates without contradiction into the tactical framework of what Jeet Kune Do aspires to do—stop-hit the bad guy! Lee was obviously gifted with good genes for movement speed, but he understood how important it was to not waste movement and/or have a poor plan of attack.